10-04-2023, 09:56 AM(This post was last modified: 10-10-2023, 07:12 PM by CptSquall. Edited 1 time in total.)
As volatile as SMJHL teams are, by nature, it is not uncommon for teams to have long droughts without winning seasons or vice-versa have streaks of years where they seem nigh unstoppable. Today we're looking at the proverbial "high water mark" of the Chevy era Great Falls Grizzlies: The Season 63 team.
I'm not so sure this can be considered so much a deep dive as it is a self retrospection of what could have been done better to try and secure the grizzlies their first 4-Star Cup win. At the time, we were in our third season of creation. One other team, to my knowledge, had been able to achieve a cup in their first three seasons and that was Evok's QCC group a few seasons and one expansion prior. With this in mind, my co-gm at the time (Fluw) and I went all in on the season to try and match this impressive feat.
What were some of the things that we did right that season? Trades. Having no draftees available and the expansion draft set of players getting ready to head out, Fluw managed an amazing flurry of trades to get fantastic team members from other teams. This would eventually cost us in the long run as we traded away several futures, but in doing so we picked up some amazing pieces such as Giannis Kroustis from Vancouver, Spicy MacHaggis from St. Louis and Gabe-Gooney-Waters Harrak from Colorado. Then adding in rookies Ambrosia Snow and Shylo Moxii to the mix and others like Clem Fandango from Detroit and we had a recipe with Bjorn Viggosson and Grogu Mandosson for some all-star power.
What we ended up doing wrong? Well, this season was one of the last seasons the league still allowed testing under FHM 6. At that time, it seemed like everyone...myself included was working every single possible angle, sometimes for hours at a time, just to try and find that extra one percent advantage that could take us over the top. Also at the time for FHM6, two-way builds were nearly the cream of the crop so pushing players to try and tweak their builds (without directly pushing them) into this manner didn't help in the long-run either. Also, having traded away several of our futures as mentioned earlier was something that would end up greatly wrong as the team wouldn't fully recover until the Season 67/68 time-frame down the road.
In all for the troubles and the headache that season, we ended up losing in the finals to the absolute powerhouse team of the era: The Newfoundland Berserkers who finished their incredible 3-peat dynasty on our heads. We came out the Eastern Conference Champions, Divisional champions at the time (a feat not matched until Season 69) but not since S63 has the Grizzlies been able to come back and make it to the finals. It was definitely a tough time back then and definitely if there was time-travel, I would go back and change a few things. For now, the high-water mark of the Grizzlies was, and remains their third season of existence: Season 63.
Perhaps the Gibbles era will prove to be more fruitful.
10-04-2023, 09:56 AMChevy Wrote: At the time, we were in our third season of creation. One other team, to my knowledge, had been able to achieve a cup in their first three seasons and that was Evok's QCC group a few seasons and one expansion prior.
Great write up, it's always different looking back and wondering what other moves could have been made or how things might have gone different. I will say there has been at least 1 other franchise that won their first cup in their 3rd season
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